The theme of Kirchentag 2015. Photo: Psalms 90.12.
Kirchentag 2015
David and Marjorie Rolfe write about their experience of Kirchentag
We have just returned from an extraordinary event held over four days in Stuttgart: the Deutsche Evangelische Kirchentag. The event has its origins in 1949 at the end of an Evangelical Week in Hannover. It was begun as a lay movement following the isolation of the church from the state during the Nazi era. The purpose was to ‘draw together Protestant Christians in Germany in order to strengthen them in their faith, to prepare them for responsibility in their churches; to encourage them in witnessing in the world; and to have solidarity with those in the world-wide community of Christendom’.
The Kirchentag has always had a bias towards the integration of theological, social and political themes, and has never shied away from sensitive issues. Nowadays the Kirchentag – literally ‘Church Congress’ – commands the respect of international leaders in church and politics, and world-class speakers on every subject are found in the programme of events. This is a national and international event with Angela Merkel, Joachim Gauk (German president) and Kofi Annan all appearing on different discussion panels.
The Kirchentag is a biennial event held in a major German city – generally one with a huge exhibition centre for trade fairs. Many cities have these. They are, perhaps, a remnant of the huge trade fairs of the Middle Ages. There are few centres in Britain outside London and Birmingham. This makes it probably impossible to have anything like the Kirchentag here. Within the four days of the Kirchentag there are around 3,000 events to choose from: some serious, some cultural and some just fun. A variety of topics are listed under three or four main themes. Thanks to the generosity of German people, visitors from outside Germany can be accommodated with families, though we chose to stay at a hotel.
The event takes over a city, with something like 150,000 participants descending on a population of 600,000. Someone once described it as ‘one Keswick Convention, two Edinburgh Festivals (complete with Fringe!), three Open University Summer Schools, a Lourdes pilgrimage, a visit to Taizé, an Ideal Homes Exhibition and a Cup Final’. There is always a biblical theme for the Kirchentag. This year it was ‘damit wir klug werden’ (that we may become wise), taken from Psalms 90.12. In 2013, when the Kirchentag was in Hamburg, it was ‘As much as you need’ from Exodus. There is always a lot of music. Indeed, every event has opening and closing music.
A difficulty for overseas visitors – there are about 5,000 of them – who do not have a thorough command of German is in finding suitable events. Fortunately, some events are in English and there is a booklet listing events in English or with a simultaneous translation. The day started with bible study and we found this fascinating. The first we tried for was given by John Bell of the Iona Community, but we were faced by ‘Hall full’ notices, which is quite common at the Kirchentag. On the second day we heard a Methodist theologian from Tonga, who was accompanied by an aborigine choir from Alice Springs in Australia. Then we heard, in a cinema, bible study given by a woman pastor from the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, USA. She was a real hoot. She had been asked to preach on the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, but to her it gave all the wrong messages. She did a brilliant job in extracting something from the wreckage. We also heard the Reith lecturer and philosopher Michael Sandel discourse on ‘What money can’t buy – politics and morality’.
A major feature of the Kirchentag is the ‘Market of Opportunity’, where 800 groups showcase their ideological wares (there is no commercial input to the Kirchentag). Amongst these were German Quakers. We think Quakerism should appeal to the German spirit of self-doubt and enquiry, but it doesn’t seem to. Our final visit was totally non-Quaker and we went to the splendid Mercedes-Benz Museum, a most enjoyable monument to capitalism in all its glory!
